Former President Barack Obama has weighed in on phenomena in the world’s skies that have perplexed observers since “flying saucers” were first reported after World War II.
“Are aliens real?” YouTuber Brian Tyler Cohen asked Obama in an interview posted Saturday.
“Uh, they’re real, but I haven’t seen them,” the former president responded.
He then quickly addressed speculation around Nevada’s Area 51, a secretive military test site that has long been claimed to contain downed extraterrestrials and their aircraft, which are purportedly being reverse-engineered.
“Uh, they’re real, but I haven’t seen them,” Obama explained. “And they’re not being kept in uh what is it? Area 51. There’s no underground facility unless there’s this enormous conspiracy and they hid it from the president of the United States.”
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Of course, an “enormous conspiracy” is exactly what has been alleged by many documentaries on the issue; that an “underground facility” at Area 51 is a “need to know” closely held secret, even kept from presidents.
Cohen then asked Obama what question he most wanted answered upon entering the White House.
“Where are the aliens?” Obama replied with a laugh. It was not clear whether he was serious or joking.
However, Obama is not the first president to pose the question.
Jimmy Carter, during the transition period after his 1976 election as the 39th president, reportedly asked then-CIA Director George H.W. Bush for access to UFO files. Bush reportedly refused, saying his curiosity was not a sufficient enough reason for disclosure.
John Podesta, a chief of staff for President Bill Clinton and counselor to Obama, for years pushed for disclosure, including reportedly picking up the phone “to call the Air Force and ask them what’s going on in Area 51,” according to a report in 1998.
Podesta also famously tweeted at the end of his time with the Obama administration that his “biggest failure” in 2014 was not securing the release of the government’s UFO files.
Area 51, as well as Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio, are often cited as locations of a secret government program to study and reverse engineer alien technology. A scientist named Bob Lazar in 1989 claimed to be part of a classified project doing exactly that at the Nevada site.
While the subject of UFOs has often been ridiculed, in recent years disclosures by the government have resulted in a far-more serious approach.
Lawmakers, including former senator and now Secretary of State Marco Rubio (R-FL) and the late Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV), have called for government transparency of the Pentagon programs that log and study what are now called UAPs (Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena) as a potential threat to national security.
UAPs were the subject of a stunning House hearing two years ago, which featured Air Force personnel and a government whistleblower, David Grusch, who said crashed alien craft and “non-human biologics” have been recovered as part of a secret government program.
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Serious treatment by lawmakers and the news media of UAPs or UFOs clearly emerged after a New York Times article in 2017 revealed a secret Pentagon program was tracking the phenomena.
It included official fighter-jet footage of unidentified craft encountered during military exercises near San Diego that appeared to defy the known abilities of manned aircraft.
Contributor Lowell Cauffiel is the author of the New York Times true crime best seller House of Secrets and nine other crime novels and nonfiction titles. See lowellcauffiel.com for more.
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